


Stars Lit in Gold

by Deisderium



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The First Avenger, Everyone is Bisexual, F/F, F/M, Ghost Steve Rogers, Inspired by Fanart, Modern Bucky Barnes, Modern Peggy Carter, Multi, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pregnant Peggy Carter, SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes, SHIELD Agent Peggy Carter, SHIELD Finds the Valkyrie, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 06:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18987010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium
Summary: It got colder. A violent shiver convulsed her, and she dropped the angel. It shattered on the tile floor, and the man——vanished.One moment he was there, and the next, he was gone.The air warmed around her, and she rubbed at the soulmark on her wrist. It stung.It seemed she would have to inform Bucky their new house was haunted.*In which Bucky and Peggy are Shield agents, married, with a baby on the way...and haunted by the ghost of Captain America.





	Stars Lit in Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art for Stars Lit in Gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18960244) by [Entwinedlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entwinedlove/pseuds/Entwinedlove). 



> It's here!!!! The CapRBB!
> 
> Many, many thanks to [EntwinedLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entwinedlove) for the beautiful art and the fic prompt! I was honored to get to write for this idea. Collaboration is wonderful--this is not an idea I'd have ever come up with on my won, and it was so much fun to write! The awesome art is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18960244), please check it out! 
> 
> Thanks also to [Zoe Alden ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoe_Alden) for the beta! Any errors you see are my own, and the ones you don't are thanks to her. 
> 
> And thank you to @epicstuckyfics for the tag suggestions! They were so helpful <3

Peggy Carter hadn't spent much time thinking about where she and Bucky were going to live. For years they'd been content in the little flat they'd rented when they were up-and-coming Shield agents, barely at home between missions, equally terrified and delighted to be together after their soulmarks recognized one another.

But now there was the baby to think of, and Peggy's salary as assistant to the director was enough for the brownstone that Bucky had found for them. They'd only been fully unpacked for about a week, and there was still work they needed to do on the nursery, but Bucky had told her that he wanted to handle it, and she trusted him to.

Of the two of them, she had advanced further in her career, and was more ambitious. After a twelve-week maternity leave, she planned on returning to work at Shield while Bucky took on the primary caretaker duties with their daughter. They were both nervous and excited about the upcoming changes and their daughter, and the brownstone was a huge step towards their new life.

The brownstone was so much larger than their old flat. It had three stories, steep, narrow staircases, and high ceilings. She loved it, loved the feeling of history and age that permeated it. It reminded her of home, of England.

She walked down the stairs, one hand curved protectively over the swell of her belly. Bucky was working late, trying to wrap up all his cases before they both took time off. The steps creaked a little under her bare feet, and she was thinking of nothing more pressing than a warm mug of tea—not real tea, but nasty stuff, decaffeinated and supposedly good for encouraging lactation. She allowed herself one cup of Ceylon in the morning, and then switched to (ugh) herbal the rest of the day. She missed a cup of builder's tea so black it stung her tongue, but that would have to wait until the baby was weaned.

She paused on the creaky step, seeing a flicker of movement on the landing below.

“Bucky?” She wasn't expecting him home, and no one else had a key. She walked down the steps more carefully, avoiding the creaky stairs. She had no desire to fight at six months pregnant, but if there was an intruder, they'd regret the intrusion.

As she reached the bottom of the steps, she shivered in a sudden cold spot and thought that she needed to check for drafts, or else make sure the radiator worked. A rather unfortunate angel sculpture that Peggy's aunt Clarisse had given them for their wedding rested on a table in the foyer. Peggy hefted it. If she had to break it on someone's head, she would not regret it in the least.

The cold intensified as she walked forward. The soulmark at her wrist ached sharply, and she was wracked by the sudden fear that something had happened to Bucky. Then, a feeling of deep melancholy not her own pierced her, and she turned, catching a glimpse of a tall man with broad shoulders and the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. He met her gaze for a long moment, and she ached at the sorrow and confusion she saw in his eyes.

The sculpture in her hand drooped; some part of her brain was convinced he wasn't a threat, although that still didn't explain what he was doing in their home—

It got colder. A violent shiver convulsed her, and she dropped the angel. It shattered on the tile floor, and the man—

—vanished.

One moment he was there, and the next, he was gone.

The air warmed around her, and she rubbed at the soulmark on her wrist. It stung.

She bit her lip, and went to find a dustpan, picking her way carefully through the shards so as not to cut her feet.

It seemed she would have to inform Bucky their new house was haunted.

🌟

Bucky was happy to be coming home. For one thing, it was the home he had picked for the two—soon to be three—of them. For another, it was a sign of how much Peggy trusted him with the details of their domestic life, and with their daughter.

He knew she worried about his taking the lion's share of childcare, but he wasn't as ambitious as Peggy. He was just fine with taking an administrative role, getting out of the field. Taking care of the life they were making together.

He unlocked and opened the door, smiling a little as he noticed that the hideous angel sculpture was gone. Maybe Peggy had finally followed through on her threats and broken it accidentally-on-purpose. He toed off his shoes and kicked them under the table in the foyer.

"Peg?" he called out.

"In the kitchen." Her voice was muffled through several walls, and he grinned.

She'd been so exhausted the first trimester, he was still delighted to find her awake when he came home late, even now at six months. He set down his briefcase and walked toward the kitchen. Most of the lights were off, but a square of golden light spilled out from the kitchen door, and when he walked in, Peggy was sitting at the table, her hands cradling a teacup. She was so beautiful, dark hair framing her face in loose waves, the lines of her face and body a little fuller, a little curvier with pregnancy, her dark eyes luminous and—

A little pinched, now that he looked closer. A little worried.

"Is everything all right?" He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She sighed and leaned into him.

"This is going to sound absolutely mad, darling, but I'm going to tell you anyway." He gave her shoulders a little squeeze. They tried to tell each other everything, and one of the many things he loved about Peggy was that she never let how saying a thing would make her look stop her from saying it. "It offends my sensibilities as a rational person, but nonetheless: I saw a ghost in our home tonight."

He leaned his head against hers. He didn't believe in ghosts, and Peggy didn't either, but she had obviously seen something, and it would have had to have been something convincing, so... "What happened?"

She told him about the man, about the cold. He didn't doubt her. She told him about being ready to defend herself, about breaking the sculpture.

"So at least there's some silver lining out of this," she finished, and he leaned over and kissed her because that was his girl.

"So, what do we do about our infestation?" he said when they broke apart.

"I'm not sure what we can do. Burn sage?" Her forehead wrinkled, and he kissed that too. "I didn't get any feeling of malice from him, just sadness."

"I guess we'll just have to keep an eye out," he said.

She gave him a weak smile and held out her left wrist where a delicate line of tiny stars marked her skin, a pale gold. They had flashed brighter when the two of them had first seen each other. He held out his own left wrist, where a galaxy of dark blue sported his own tiny gold stars. They’d been a dull gray for most of his life, only changing color when he met her.

He'd been terrified when he'd been shot in the shoulder, over a year ago now, that the injury would somehow hurt the mark, affect the bond between them. But it hadn't; he had nerve damage and some scarring, and would never have the full range of motion back, but his mark was still there.

"And," Peggy had told him, fiercely, when he'd told her his fears, "even if you lost the mark or the entire arm, it wouldn't change a thing about us."

Now, they pressed their wrists together, and he closed his eyes as her worry dissipated under a tide of love and contentment. They could handle a ghost, or whatever it was that she had seen; they could handle anything as long as they were together.

"Come on," he said after a moment, "let's go to bed."

🌟

But after Peggy was curled up and dreaming, Bucky found he couldn't sleep. She had a complicated arrangement of pillows to support her belly and her back, and he was careful not to disturb her as he slipped out of bed.

He padded down the stairs, keeping an eye out for any flickers of movement, but the house was still. He poured himself a glass of water and went to sit in the dark living room, thinking. He knew that Peggy was worried about him backing off of work; she had told him she feared that taking care of the house and their daughter wouldn't be enough for him. He hadn't been able to articulate it at the time, but now he was thinking of his time in the army; as a sergeant, he had mostly taken care of his squad. This was what he was good at. When you took away his skill as a sniper—and the injury had—this was what he had done. He could do it for the three of them, and be content.

He took a sip of water, paying attention to the sensation, grounding him in the present. The past was past and the future was unknown ahead of them, but he was here now. He and Peg and their daughter, whose name they _still_ hadn't settled on, were what mattered now. He looked at the photographs on the bookshelves: Peggy and him, mostly, in various locations; a few of their friends; and a little black-and-white printout that if you squinted right, could possibly be a lima bean, or an alien, but was, in fact, an ultrasound photograph of their daughter.

The water was cold against his tongue, cold as it slid down his throat, and he shivered.

He sat up straighter. It wasn't the water making him shiver; it was the room, which was suddenly much colder than it had been.

He picked up the glass and made himself drink, but then sensation flared along his left wrist and he was catapulted back into fear.

The soulmark at his left wrist burned, and he set the glass against it, cold and grounding, flung back to the hospital when he'd been afraid of losing the arm.

He tightened the fingers of his right hand around the glass. It was cool and slick. _I'm not there_ , he told himself. He was in his and Peggy's house, and this was just a memory that had no power over him, this was just—

All the stars in the galaxy at his wrist burned, and he set the glass down so abruptly water sloshed over the edge and onto the coffee table. Not that Peggy would give a damn, he thought distantly, but he had been looking forward to furniture without water rings.

Cold washed over him again and he turned back to the bookshelves. All the photographs which had been such a comfort to him before sent a chill down his spine. They were no longer of him or Peggy or their families. Every frame showed a different angle on a man in uniform.

He was unsmiling, blond as far as Bucky could tell in the sepia-toned portraits. Bucky rubbed his arms, and every hair on every part of his body stood up, whether from the cold or the sense of unreality that had settled over him, he couldn't say.

He and stood up. In every photograph, the man's eyes turned to follow him as he crossed the room to the light switch and flipped it.

As the lights came on, the room warmed up, and the photos went back to their usual subjects.

Bucky let out a breath, shoulders relaxing as the tension left him. Maybe Peggy was right and their ghost, or whatever he was, meant no harm, but he was still creepy as fuck.

His soulmark still ached at his wrist. "I hope she's right about you," he said to the empty room, and then went back upstairs to curl his body around Peggy in her pillow fortress and curve his arm over the swell of her belly.

🌟

Bucky had given Peggy a number of pillows that were supposed to support her spine and she had all of them draped over her desk chair. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be working today. The small of her back hurt, and she found herself leaning forward to ease the ache, typing up a report from far too close to the pull-out keyboard at her desk.

Perhaps something about the proximity of the desk irritated the baby because she launched the strongest kick Peggy had yet felt, enough that it sent the keyboard back nearly half an inch.

"Who's a strong girl," she whispered, patting her own side. "What a kick you've got, just like mum and dad."

Her phone rang, and she picked up the receiver. "Carter."

The voice on the other end of the line was terribly familiar. "Agent Carter."

"Director Fury." She hadn't actually seen her boss in nearly a week, and he had yet to brief her on why he was away, but she assumed it would come, in time, or else when it became urgent.

"Can you still fly?" he asked bluntly.

"Yes, I've got another month or so before it's an issue." She clicked her pen against her calendar decisively.

"Good." Fury’s voice had a note she'd never heard before. "I need you at the helipad in thirty minutes with your go bag."

"I'll be there." She hung up, pulled her bag out from the closet, and took her personal phone out of her purse to dial Bucky.

"Fury called. I'm headed out, darling. Not sure how long I'll be gone," she said after they exchanged greetings.

"I'll look after our ghost while you're gone."

"There's an explanation for it," she said crisply. It was easier to say in the daytime, when both of them had only encountered the ghost at night. "We'll figure it out."

"Yeah. If anyone can, it's you." He was silent for a moment. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too." She tilted her wrist, looked at the chain of stars across it. "I'll be back before you know it." She looked at the clock. She needed to run by the loo. As the baby got bigger, her bladder seemed to shrink. "I've got to run."

"Be careful," he said, which was what they'd always said to each other, back when they'd both run missions, and what Bucky still said to her now, before she left.

"You too," she said, and he laughed as they hung up.

She grabbed her go bag and went.

🌟

The flight to Greenland took less than three hours in a quinjet. Peggy was provided with much sturdier snow gear than any she'd have packed for herself. There were no files to review; Fury had given her nothing in the way of sitrep, only the order to come. She tried to hold on to her patience; it was good practice for having a child, she supposed.

The jet touched down in Nuuk, and Peggy bundled herself into her gear. It fit well enough, except for where it strained over her stomach. She was overheated in under a minute, and stepped into the frigid air with a sense of relief.

Fury was waiting for her on the runway, nearly unrecognizable in his own winter gear, next to a hulking vehicle that had some kind of relationship to a Jeep.

"Agent Carter," he said.

"Director Fury." She smiled at him. "What do we have here?"

He handed her an earpiece and she hooked it over her ear beneath her hood. "I'll tell you on the way. We recovered an important piece of American history, and then it got...complicated." She walked around to the passenger's side of the car, careful of sliding in the snow, and clambered in as Fury started the engine. "What do you know about the Valkyrie?"

"From World War Two?" Fury nodded as they pulled out of the lot. She wracked her brain. "It was the plane Captain America diverted into the ocean—oh! I presume we've recovered the Valkyrie?"

"Got it in one." Fury shot her a smile that she barely saw around the hood of his parka.

She hesitated, wondering why Fury was here, why _she_ was here—

"I presume Captain Rogers' remains were inside," she said softly. Perhaps the poor man could finally be put to rest, after all this time, reinterred in his empty grave in Arlington.

"That's what we thought, initially." Fury pulled into a lot by a warehouse. There were a lot of vehicles very similar to the not-a-Jeep parked around it. "You'll want to keep your coat on. We're keeping the warehouse the same temperature as outside until we're able to get him to New York."

Peggy shot him a look, and crunched through the snow into the warehouse. The door wasn't locked, but there was an agent just inside the door who demanded her badge, then saluted once she read it. Nick followed her in, and murmured something to the agent at the door while Peggy took in the warehouse. There were people, possibly scientists with lab coats hidden under bulky winter gear, taking some kind of measurements from several machines hooked up to the biggest ice cube she'd ever seen.

The ice cube reflected distorted shades of red, white, and blue.

Her heart thumped painfully in her ribcage. She had known of the Captain's sacrifice—everyone did—but it was different to know it in the abstract and to be confronted with the flesh-and-blood remnants of the man who had given up his life to save the city she now called home.

She crossed the room to peer into the block of ice. The shield was clear, as close to the surface as it was, but she couldn't tell much about the man through the distortion, except to see that the ice had clearly preserved him very well. "What a shame," she murmured, and was aware of a dull, constant ache at her wrist. Possibly the cold, which she felt even through the parka. Not so the ache in her throat; she was surprisingly emotional at the sight of him through the thick ice. Not that it took much these days; her entire body was so flooded with hormones that telephone adverts made her cry lately.

"A brave man," Fury remarked beside her. "Dying to save a lot of people. Only it seems like it didn't take."

Peggy turned to him sharply at that. "Fury—"

He nodded toward the machines. "Some of our people drilled down to get samples." Peggy looked at the lines going into the ice and hissed a little, under her breath. The baby chose that moment to move, a strange squirming sensation in her belly.

"Samples?" Peggy said, something inside her going on point.

"People have been trying to recreate the serum for seventy years, Agent Carter. You'd better believe we're going to find out what made the one successful case tick." Fury sighed and rolled his shoulders back. "But...when the machine broke his skin, he bled, and you'd better believe they pulled back immediately. When they sent a sensor down instead, they found a heartbeat. Not beating fast. Not beating often. But somehow, he's still alive."

"My god," Peggy said, because the thought was both magical and horrifying. "How can we possibly revive him?"

"We're taking him back to New York," Fury said, "still in the ice. Then we're going to have to warm him up very carefully, and then, assuming it works, we're going to have to figure out how to acclimate a supersoldier from the forties into the twenty-first century."

Peggy let herself think about it, really think about it. How vast the culture shock would be, how disconnected a man who had been ready to die would be to wake and find out nearly everyone he'd ever known had died instead, and he had to keep going. "Quite a task," she said. "What's my role?" Fury would not have brought her here just to show her this sleeping beauty in his frozen coffin, waiting to awake to a world so different from the one where he'd gone to sleep.

"You're going to be doing the acclimatizing," Fury said.

🌟

Bucky was no stranger to sleeping alone, but since he'd taken leave and Peggy had cut back on assignments that took her out of town while she was pregnant, he'd gotten used to falling asleep with her every night. Now that she was gone, he couldn't sleep without her. Her body pillows were just no substitute.

He turned over, flipping his pillow over in case that would help, kicking his feet out of the blanket when he was too hot. He was wiggling one foot out in the cooler air when abruptly the temperature dropped. He jerked his foot back inside the covers, and sat up, pulse speeding.

Bucky hadn't seen the ghost since the incident with the photographs, and while he knew he hadn't imagined it, he had started to question his memory of it. But he hadn't forgotten the sudden drop in temperature, and now that the room was turning to ice around him, he knew that the ghost—whatever it might actually be—was about to appear.

There was a sidearm in the bedside table. and he swiped his thumb over the biometric lock and pulled it out, not expecting to need it, but comforted by the solid weight of it in his hand. The incident with the photographs, there'd been nothing to shoot, but Peggy had seen a man—

And as if the thought had conjured him, Bucky saw the man, framed by the door to their bedroom. He was tall, taller than Bucky, probably, and dressed in a drab olive-green army uniform. His blond hair was slicked back, and his handsome face was so sad. Bucky simultaneously wanted to demand what he was doing in his house and comfort him.

He got out of bed and padded across the room, goosebumps rising on his skin at the cold, gun held loosely at his side. The man watched him out of the corner of his eye.

He looked real, as Bucky got closer, except that Bucky could see the doorframe through edges of him, _Photostatic veil_ , his brain supplied, except those had to be on something. _Holographic projection_. Maybe.

The man looked right at Bucky for the first time. His brow furrowed, like he wasn't sure what he was seeing; then he smiled, and Bucky's breath caught. Even a sad smile transformed his face.

"Who are you?" Bucky breathed.

The man didn't answer, only held his left hand out. Against his better judgement, Bucky stepped forward to meet him, oddly certain that underneath the cuff of his jacket, he'd see a soulmark, even though the odds of his mark being on his wrist too were low, burning to know what that mark would be. He reached out, even though he knew he shouldn't—

—but when their fingers touched, he felt nothing, and the man disappeared, leaving behind only the fading cold, and Bucky, shaken.

🌟

The next morning, Bucky was exhausted. He hadn't been able to get back in bed until he’d methodically searched the bedroom and the hallway for any device that could have projected an image of the man, or altered the temperature in the room.

He hadn't found anything.

He had fallen asleep not long before dawn and woken with his arms desperately clutching a pillow to his chest, dreams of wrapping himself around Peggy and the sad man blearily fading from his mind.

What. The. Fuck.

Bucky was happy in his marriage, thrilled about the baby, about their new home. About the prospect of being the one that took care of Peggy and their daughter. So why was he dreaming about the ghost in their house, what the _hell_? Was it some kind of subconscious dissatisfaction with his life?

Peggy was his _soulmate_ , for fuck's sake. He could feel her, always, even now when she was so far away that her feelings were like a fragile veil brushing up against his own. He massaged his left wrist as he finished painting the nursery and put together the crib. It was satisfying to assemble it, to make something from all the scattered pieces. Something solid, something their daughter would use.

When Peggy came home, he'd have the nursery ready.

🌟

Peggy was gone for a week. In that time, Bucky saw the ghost more and more frequently. He couldn't pretend to himself that he was unaffected by the visions. and he couldn't pretend that they were conjured by some kind of technology. In Peggy's absence, he was starting to wonder if something in his own mind wasn't conjuring them up, and that scared him most of all.

The man seemed to be getting more desperate and sadder as time went on, like he had realized he could reach for Bucky but never touch him. Like Bucky was something he wanted.

And Bucky wanted him too—to help him, to make it so that he wasn't so damn sad. But he also wanted to see the man's wrist, where he was certain his soulmark would be, like his and Peg's, and he wanted to both tuck the man under his arm—which was ridiculous, he was fucking taller than Bucky himself—and bury his face in that broad chest.

He wanted to see Peggy sitting on the man's lap while he brought her a glass of wine and then rubbed her feet after a long day. He wanted to see the perfect imprint of her lips at the corner of the man's jaw, could see the three of them tangled together on their bed. Wanted it.

And that was...unrealistic, at best, even without addressing any of the emotional complications. Every time he or the man reached out to each other, the man vanished.

🌟

Bucky finished putting together the crib and the dresser in the freshly-painted room. He was tired and sore, and feeling the sweet thrill of victory over the unnecessarily-complicated instructions that had come with the furniture. More importantly, the room was beginning to look like an actual nursery. He still had to assemble the changing table, and the crib mattress was still wrapped in plastic, but tomorrow, he'd go out and buy bedding, so it would look like an actual bed when Peggy got home.

On a whim, he ran down the steps to get the framed picture of the ultrasound to set on the dresser. They'd put all manner of pictures there later—baby portraits, their daughter pulling up on a coffee table, smiling a gummy smile, and later, maybe a tooth or two—but for now, this would suffice. It was a promise of all those pictures to come.

He took the steps back up two at a time, then set the picture in place. Exhaustion hit him like a sledgehammer, and he turned the lights off and stumbled down the hall to his and Peggy's bedroom.

He was gross and smelly from working all day, so he pushed into the shower to sluice off his sweat. He cranked the water up to just the right side of painfully hot and let the aches of the day wash off him along with the sweat. The water and the steam were so hot that he didn't notice until he had turned the shower off and was pulling his towel off the rack that the ambient temperature in the bathroom had dropped significantly.

A shiver ran down Bucky's spine.

“Ghost?” he said, then felt like an idiot.

No one answered. Steam rose off his skin as he toweled off and went into the bedroom.

The ghost was there; of course, he was.

He was tall and beautiful, and bending over to look at the photos on the dresser: a framed diptych of himself and Peggy, and next to it, a larger frame, a photo of the two of them laughing and hanging onto each other: their engagement photo.

The man reached out to touch the frame, and Bucky shivered. "Hello," he said, and was surprised when the man turned to look at him. Their eyes met and for a second, Bucky couldn't look away, trying and failing to read the emotion in them. The man's eyes were so blue, and, as always, unhappy, but there was something else as he looked at Bucky, an emotion that Bucky couldn't interpret.

It might have been surprise, since Bucky was wearing a towel and nothing else. Bucky shivered; the room was the same frigid cold that it had been every time he saw the ghost.

The man reached for him, again, but was gone before they could touch. Again.

The entire week Bucky had felt the man's presence even when he didn't see him. It should have been creepy, but it wasn't. It felt friendly, like someone watching over him. He caught glimpses of the man out of the corner of his eye, felt that shattering cold, such a contrast to the warmth he felt in his regard.

Bucky sighed in frustration and ran his hands through his hair. He couldn't even call Peg, not only because she was in the field, but because he didn’t even know what to say? "I now believe our ghost is really a ghost after all, and for some reason I envision him in our life"?

As if she knew—and maybe she did, even as far away as she was, the way he sometimes knew when she needed him—his phone rang, and Peggy's photo popped up on the screen.

 _Thank god_. Bucky swiped up. "Pegs?"

"Darling," she said warmly, and something in his shoulders relaxed. He knew she could handle herself, of course she could, but he was incapable of not worrying when she was in the field and he wasn't.

"Are you headed back?"

"I'm nearly there." Now that he was listening, he could hear a faint mechanical hum behind her; the quinjet's engines, most likely. "I've got quite a project coming up that I'm hopeful you'll get to help me with." Her voice was bright with excitement.

"Oh yeah? Anything you can tell me about?"

"Not yet, I'm afraid, but soon."

He nodded out of habit, remembered she couldn't see him, and said, "The nursery's nearly done."

"I can't wait to see it." They were both quiet for a moment and he wished he could look at her her, could touch her. It had only been a week, but it felt like so much longer. "How's our ghost?" she asked brightly.

"I—Actually, I've seen quite a lot of him," Bucky said. "I'm starting to think he might really be a ghost." He bit his lip, then went on when she didn't say anything. "I've looked for some kind of device that might project him, some way of explaining the cold. I'm good at what I do, Pegs, but I can't find a thing."

"We'll look together when I get home," she said.

"Do you know yet when that'll be?"

"I'll let you know as soon as I do," she promised. "There's a thing that has to happen, and then I hope to bring you on to help."

"I hope so too. It'd be great to work together again." They had met as agents, and worked together as a team before—while—they had fallen in love. Since she’d become Director Fury’s assistant, they’d been assigned to different operations.

"I'll call you as soon as I can."

"I know you will. I love you." He tilted his left wrist up and looked at the stars crossing it, gold against the background of blue. He and Peggy would be fine; he'd make sure of it.

"I love you too," she said, and when they'd hung up, he went back to the bedroom and lay down, pretending he wasn't waiting for the temperature to drop.

🌟

There was no reason they shouldn't film the process of de-icing Captain America; in fact, it made good sense, as unlikely as it was that there would ever be another frozen supersoldier to thaw. Peggy knew that.

So why did all of this seem so invasive?

She supposed she had come to feel protective of the frozen man in the week they had spent extracting him from the ice, and, of course, she would want for anyone to have as much of their dignity preserved as possible, in any circumstance. But she also felt possessive in a way she couldn't quite explain, like Captain America was hers somehow. It was ridiculous, of course it was, but emotions weren't terribly logical.

She was excited that Fury had assigned her to the project, was all, and she wanted Bucky here with her. That wouldn't happen until they got the Captain out of the ice and they knew whether they would be able to revive him. Fury had told her they had no way of knowing whether he would make it through the thawing process, but since he had made it this far, he was hopeful.

Technicians had chipped away at the block of ice surrounding him. Delicate work, in a room kept at freezing. He would be transferred immediately to a brine solution that would be warmed in slow stages, with an oxygen mask and a an IV full of sedatives they hoped would work on a supersoldier. She couldn't imagine how horrific it would be to wake up still partially frozen.

"Agent Carter," one of the technicians called, "we've gotten the last of the ice off of him."

She walked over, coat pulled tight around her belly. The technician had already gotten the oxygen mask on him, obscuring his face from nose to chin, and had the IV ready to insert as soon as his flesh had thawed enough to be pliable.

He was a big man, as was to be expected, and his blond hair looked darker with water. His skin was pale with cold, and still as he was, it was hard to believe that he could possibly be alive.

The technicians manhandled him into the tank with the brine solution and submerged him. Now there was nothing to do but wait as his body slowly came up to temperature. Peggy checked her watch. It was on ein the morning. Too late to call Bucky, too late to do much of anything but catch a few hours of sleep on one of the rather desperately uncomfortable beds kept for agents.

"Call me if there's any change," she told a technician, and left to snatch whatever rest she could.

Peggy woke from troubled dreams she couldn't remember to the ringing of her phone.

"Carter," she said, keeping her voice crisp to make up for how bleary she felt.

"Captain Rogers has been fully thawed. We are waiting on you to stop the sedation."

"I'm on my way," she said, and pushed herself to her feet.

🌟

Captain America looked much better than he had the last time she'd seen him. His skin color had warmed with the return of his circulation, and the technicians had peeled his sodden uniform off of him and redressed him in khaki pants, socks and shoes, and an SSR t-shirt. They'd laid him on top of a bed in a room made to look like a hospital in the 1940s. Fury had explained his reasoning for this, to ease him into the revelation of when he was, but when he told her he wanted her to dress like a nurse from World War Two, she had put her foot down.

"If I'm to acclimatize him to this century," she said, "I'm not beginning that relationship with a lie."

Fury had argued with her, but in the end, he'd given in. Because she was right.

Now, Steve Rogers lay so still on the bed. The technician removed the IV from his arm and covered the wound with a plaster after pressing gauze to it for a moment.

"His oxygen levels are fine," he said, and removed the mask.

Peggy had never in her life felt her knees buckle, but they did now. She put a hand out and leaned against the wall.

Because she knew him. The man on the bed—she knew him.

He was their ghost.

"What the hell," she said, mostly to herself.

The technician glanced at her curiously, but said nothing except, "He should wake up in the next five to ten minutes. We're not certain how quickly he'll burn through the sedative, given the serum."

"Yes, thank you," she said, and barely noticed when the technician left the room. She sat in a chair next to the bed, and stared at the man in it as if the force of her gaze could wake him up. But no matter how intently she watched him, he slept on.

After fifteen minutes, the technician came back into the room, frowning. "He should be awake by now." He ran a scanner over Captain Rogers' wrist, pausing until it beeped. "The sedative is no longer in his system. I don't understand it."

"Give me a moment to make a call," Peggy said, already walking toward the closest office that had a phone.

🌟

Bucky woke up early, the last memory of a dream slipping away from him, a hand reaching out to him before he could catch it. He rolled over and caught sight of the clock: 4:45 am. He groaned. It was earlier than he wanted to be up, but he didn't think he could go back to sleep. A hand he couldn't catch shouldn’t feel like a nightmare, but his heart was pounding regardless, his breath coming quick.

He got up, brushed his teeth, then made himself a cup of coffee. He went to the nursery and started assembling the last piece of furniture: the changing table. The instructions were sufficiently annoying that he didn't have to think about anything else but how the screws fit together and which almost-identical slats of wood were labeled I or J in the diagram.

When the room suddenly got colder, it was a welcome distraction, but when he saw the ghost's expression, his heart dropped.

He had gotten used to sad smiles, but on the ghost's face now was fear, maybe terror. He reached out to Bucky, his hands outstretched, and, for the first time, Bucky could see his wrist.

On the inside of his wrist was a soulmark. Like his, like Peggy's, it was on the left wrist, with a star as its base. Where Peggy's was a delicate line almost like a bracelet, and Bucky's was a branching galaxy, this man's was a star in the center of a few concentric circles, bracketed by two more stars. It reminded him of something, but he couldn't bring it to mind, and it didn't matter. The man’s mark was gray, like his before Peggy turned it gold.

He held his own left hand out, like a gift, so the ghost could see the galaxy across his skin. The man's eyes went wide, and he looked straight at Bucky, the fear in his eyes suddenly laced with wonder. Bucky reached out closer, wishing for their hands to touch, to cross whatever terrible divide separated them—time, or death—but before they could touch, the man vanished as though he had been pulled away.

Bucky sat on the floor, heart pounding, surrounded by the pieces of the life he wanted to build for his and Peggy's daughter, and wondered what the fuck was wrong with him.

🌟

When the phone rang a little after eight in the morning, Bucky almost jumped out of his skin. He had finished building the changing table and had spent more time than was reasonable worrying about his ghost, and Peggy, and the baby, and what was even happening to him. His gut was convinced that the ghost was real somehow, but he also worried that possibly he was losing his damn mind.

It was a Shield number, but not one he recognized, not Peggy's office, or Fury's.

"Barnes," he said.

"Bucky," Peggy said, and it was only because he knew her every inflection that he knew that something was wrong. To anyone else she'd have sounded perfectly put together, but she was slightly breathless and her voice had the faintest waver.

"What's wrong?" He swallowed hard. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I need you to come to headquarters as soon as possible. I—I'd think I'm losing my mind, but—" He jumped, hearing his own thoughts from just a moment ago echoed in her voice. "I need you here," she said again.

He was already slipping on shoes and grabbing his keys from the hook by the door. "I'm on my way," he told her.

🌟

When Bucky got to Shield's Manhattan office, a junior agent was waiting for him beyond the security desk. As soon as he'd scanned his badge, she caught his attention. "Agent Barnes? Agent Carter is waiting for you. I'll take you where you need to go."

"Thanks," he said, and followed her to the elevator bank, then to a floor much higher than the one his office was on, even higher than the one Peggy's office was on. The agent led him down a corridor to a door with a scanner lock.

"I don't have clearance to enter," she said, "but your badge has been approved."

He thanked her again and swiped his badge through the lock, pushing the door open once the light turned green. Once inside, he stopped dead in his tracks. The room was set up to look like an old-timey hospital room or something, complete with a man in a narrow bed. He didn't have eyes for that at first; Peggy had sounded so off on the phone, he had to see her to be sure she was all right.

She looked beautiful, as always, smiling tiredly at him, her lipstick perfect, her suit jacket unbuttoned over the swell of her belly. Director Fury was at her side, scowling, but that didn't bother Bucky at all; Fury was always scowling.

"What's going on?" Bucky said. He didn't go to hug her, but only because they were on duty. He wanted to fold her into his arms, but it would have to wait.

"I'm not really sure," Peggy said. "I need you to help me be sure that I'm not losing my mind." She pointed over his shoulder, toward the man in the bed, and Bucky turned to really look at him for the first time. Emotion ran through him like electricity, so sharp and jolting he couldn't even tell what he was feeling.

"It's him," he breathed. "Peggy, it's him."

She laughed shakily. "I thought so."

"Let me be very clear," Fury said. "If I understand it correctly, Captain America has been haunting your new house?"

"Wait, what? Captain America died in World War Two," Bucky said before his brain caught up.

"Yes," Fury said. "Our team found him and recovered him from the ice a few weeks ago. We just finished thawing him out this morning."

"Let me guess." Bucky licked lips that had suddenly gone dry. "That was around seven thirty this morning."

"How did you know?" Peggy said.

"I saw the ghost, and then he vanished, and it was—different from the other times." Bucky scrubbed a hand through his hair, trying to make this fit. Captain America. Steve Rogers. A ghost in their home. A real man, frozen in ice for seventy years, to wake up in a future completely alone. _Well_ , Bucky thought, glancing at his wrist. _Not completely alone_.

"You know this sounds like a load of malarkey," Fury said, and Bucky snorted, because yeah, it did.

"What I don't understand," Peggy said, "besides how any of this is possible, is why us?"

"I think I know," Bucky said. "Come here, Peg." He took her hand, and pulled her forward, walking them both to the bed.

The man—Steve—had been laid on top of the bed, over the covers, his arms lax at his sides. Bucky felt strange about touching him without his permission, but he had to know if what he had seen earlier that morning had been real. His right hand still clasped in Peggy's, he took Steve's hand in his left, and gently rotated his wrist outward, until the star—his shield, some distant part of his mind thought, they had modelled Steve's shield after his soulmark—came into view.

Peggy gasped, Fury, behind them said, "What?" in a grumpy tone of voice, but Bucky barely heard either. Steve's soulmark flashed gold at the same time as the galaxy on Bucky's wrist did. Peggy's fingers tightened on his, and he could feel her joy and confusion along the bond between them, and he knew even before he looked that the mark at her wrist had flashed gold, too.

"He's our soulmate?" Peggy said incredulously.

Fury said, "What the fuck?" and Bucky wished he could see the look on his face, because he sounded as surprised as Bucky had ever heard him, but he couldn't look away from Steve, because those long eyelashes fluttered down, and then up.

A pair of very blue eyes met Bucky's. Two small furrows creased between his eyebrows, and then he looked down to the hand that was joined to Bucky's and their marks still glowing gold, then over to the light at Peggy's wrist. His eyes went wider, and he looked between the two of them. Bucky felt surprise and confusion rolling off of him in waves.

"What—" His voice cracked. "Where am I?"

Fury came to the foot of the bed, where he could see all three of them. "You're in New York, Cap, but it's been a while. We're going to give you all the details, but it looks like you've got a surprise welcoming committee."

He sat up and looked from Bucky to Peggy. Bucky tried to project his feelings of welcome and joy down their new bond, and felt Steve's shock turn to cautious hope and happiness.

"Yeah," he said, "looks like I do."

🌟

Steve took an apartment a twenty-minute walk from Bucky and Peggy's house. He was over a lot, but all three of them agreed they needed enough distance, especially at first,  needed time to get to know each other. Bucky had known the first time he saw Peggy, when their marks had lit up like the sky at sunrise, but they'd taken the time to date, to get to know each other, and Steve deserved that too. He deserved a lot better than he'd gotten, in Bucky's opinion, but Bucky couldn't do anything about his missed years. He could make sure that the shock of finding his soulmates—a happier shock, but still one more shock on top of the others—turned into happiness. Bucky was determined to make it happen.

He saw a lot of Steve, of course, since Peggy (and now Bucky too) were Steve's official guides to the twenty-first century. But that felt like homework, an overwhelming stream of information that Shield wanted Steve to catch up on from the seventy years he'd missed. Bucky didn't want Steve to think of them as homework.

So he took Steve out on dates, with Peggy, or without if she was busy, and invited him over to the house whenever he wanted. One day while Peggy was debriefing with Fury, he showed Steve the nursery, almost shy about it, and watched Steve take it in.

"I could paint a mural for the baby," Steve offered, shy in turn—Bucky could feel his hesitance down the bond between them, was equally sure Steve could tell how happy he was at the offer.

"I'd love that," Bucky said, and they spent the next half hour at the kitchen table, sharing a pot of tea while Steve roughed out a couple of possibilities on sheets of printer paper. Bucky watched him with impossible fondness. He wanted so desperately for Steve to find a home with them, wanted to give him anything he wanted, anything he needed.

"We should get a sketchbook to keep here," Bucky blurted out after Steve finished a sketch of castles and dragons. "For if you want to draw."

Steve's mouth curved into a smile. Bucky didn't think he'd ever get used to the fullness of his lips, any more than he'd ever gotten used to Peggy's dimples when she grinned.

"I dreamed about you," Steve said. "You and Peggy. Before I woke up."

"I saw you," Bucky said. "I thought you were a ghost, or...something I couldn't explain. But even just the sight of you...I wanted to make you happy. I still do."

"Yeah?" Steve reached out, sliding his hand across the table, and Bucky took it, carefully curling their fingers together. "Well, you do. They were good dreams. But being here with you is better. I don't know what I'd do without you and Peggy."

Bucky pulled Steve's hand close to him and dropped a kiss on his knuckles, watching his face. "Pal, you don't have to."

Steve leaned over, put his free hand along Bucky's jaw, and pressed a chaste kiss against his lips. Bucky couldn't hide the joy pressing against his breastbone like a hand, wouldn't want to. Steve leaned back a second later, eyes bright, and smiled at Bucky, and Bucky decided then and there that he'd try his damndest to get Steve to smile like that every day.

🌟

Peggy came home to only one handsome man in her house; an occurrence that was becoming more and more unusual.

Bucky was sitting at the kitchen table when she came in, several sheets of paper spread in front of him, looking at them. Contentment radiated along the bond between them, and she smiled, and dropped a kiss on the top of his head.

"What's this?" She set her purse on the kitchen counter and kicked off her heels, promising herself she'd take them to the bedroom in a moment.

"Steve did some sketches. He wants to paint a mural for the baby's room." He fanned the pages out, and she leaned over his shoulder. In rough pencil, she saw a fantasy world full of castles and knights and dragons, an underwater seascape full of friendly fish and whales. A magical forest full of sweet, cartoonish bears.

"These are all so lovely." She had to clear her throat. Emotions had stopped it up. She ran her hand down Bucky's arm until she found his hand and squeezed it.

Bucky looked back over his shoulder at her. His eyes were so clear, familiar and beloved. "I was afraid," he began and then stopped. She could feel him collecting his thoughts. "When I thought he was a ghost, I was afraid of what I felt for him, afraid it lessened what I felt for you. But that's not it at all."

She craned around him to kiss him, pressed her love into him with her mouth. "No, darling," she said when they broke apart. Her eyelids were hot and prickling with tears—damn hormones—but it wasn't sadness she was feeling, but only a happiness bigger than the two of them. "What we have is big enough for him too."

He turned sideways on the chair and pulled her into his lap, running his hands up and down her back. "I was thinking. His mother's name was Sarah."

She looped her hands around his neck and pressed a kiss into the notch of his collarbones. Her heart felt very full. "Sarah's a lovely name for a girl," she agreed.

🌟

Steve hefted the duffle bag containing all his worldly possessions over his shoulder, and stood at the foot of the brownstone’s front steps. It had been six months since he'd woken up in the future, three since he'd had the privilege of staying with Peggy and Bucky while Sarah was born. He'd been here much more than he'd been at the apartment Shield had provided him.

Inside this house were Bucky, Peggy, and Sarah, and anywhere they were was home. He hadn't expected that he would fall for Sarah as quickly and as deeply as he had with her parents, but the fact of the matter was that he had loved her before she was born, and the moment he met her, she had him wrapped around his finger.

Before she was born, she had been a symbol of Bucky and Peggy accepting him into his life, in a way; they'd given her his mother's name, they'd symbolically brought him into their lives, and that had been important.

But then he had held her, right after Peggy had, before Bucky had even held her, and he had felt both of their happiness—all _three_ of their happiness traveling through their soulbond like an infinite link—and he had known that he fit into their family. More, that their family wouldn't be complete without him.

He could have made his way in this new century by himself; but he didn’t have to. He thought sometimes about waking up alone, waking up without murals to paint, without Bucky, and Peggy, and Sarah.

He thought about it, and shuddered.

He looked at his left wrist, no longer glowing, but changed to gold, a living symbol of the bond between them. He knocked on the door and waited.

A second later the door swung open, Peggy leaning against the jamb, Bucky standing behind her, cradling Sarah.

"Steve," Peggy said, her face lit with a smile. "Welcome home."

🌟


End file.
